open source systems for libraries

OAI-PMH

Ronda wrote in with a press release, most of which is available at the Fedora site. From the version 1.1 release notes, this is mostly a bugfix release, and is compatible with 1.0 repositories (after config file updates). New features include a new API for querying repository info, better self-referential URL handling, and Oracle 9i support. Several significant-sounding bugs were squashed also.

Ed writes: "Net::OAI::Harvester is a new Perl module available from CPAN for easily interacting with data providers that implement the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. It provides an object-oriented client interface to OAI-PMH in the same way that LWP::UserAgent does for HTTP. Net::OAI::Harvester is basically a toolkit which allows you to quickly write programs that retrieve data from OAI-PMH archives without having to get your hands dirty generating HTTP requests, parsing large amounts of XML, and representing lots of data in memory.

Net::OAI::Harvester uses XML::SAX internally, so potentially large documents are handled as streams (no large DOMs in memory). An OAI DublinCore module is included for representing Dublin Core metadata; and there is an extension mechanism so that you can plug in your own metadata handler to handle other flavors of metadata. For more information see: http://search.cpan.org/author/ESUMMERS/OAI-Harvester-0.2/lib/Net/OAI/Harvester.pm

If you are interested in contributing at all to the project please express your interest at on the perl4lib list."

mdewsnip writes: "Greenstone v2.40 is now available for download! A big change in this release is the inclusion in the Windows download of the "Greenstone Librarian Interface", a tool for collecting, expanding and building digital libraries. It gives you access to Greenstone's functionality from an easy-to-use 'point and click' interface, and is also available for Unix systems. Other important changes include a new plugin for importing data from perl's DBI interface, a new plugin for parsing records from OAI servers, improvements to MGPP configuration, new Czech, Galician, Japanese and Thai interfaces, and many bug fixes and other improvements."

a little birdie yim'd me that DSpace version 1.1 (inc. docs) is available. From the sf news item: "New features include Advanced Search capability with fielded searching, better Unicode support, improved performance and lots of other good stuff. And bug fixes. Lots of bug fixes."

MIT Libraries and HP have released version 1.0 of DSpace (source available from sourceforge). DSpace is a digital repository in production use since September at MIT Libraries as a service for capturing, persisting, and providing access to the intellectual (research) output of the MIT community. DSpace will also be the long-term archive for materials from OpenCourseWare. Now it's available as an institutional repository platform to the rest of the world. See also coverage from the Boston Globe and CNET.

Eric wrote to oss4lib-discuss: "This release of MyLibrary is incremental, but there still a number of noteworthy additions to the distribution: the software now encrypts users' cookies as they are sent from the server to the browser; Impersonate patron is fixed; there are statistical reports against the underlying database summarizing usage; the scripts distribution now includes a set of PHP scripts demonstrating how MyLibrary can participate in OAI (Open Archives Initiative) for sharing metadata. Similarly, the distribution also includes a Perl script for writing RDF files from the underlying database."

from the eprints site: "EPrints 2 is strictly internationalised with all metadata being stored as unicode and every phrase used to interact with users collected into an XML "phrase file" which may be translated. To save duplicated effort, later versions will bundle configurations for languages other than English."

Today's the day: the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting is posted, and the public forum in D.C. is going on as we speak. Everyone in our community would do well to take a close look at 1.0 and consider the opportunities this new standard provides. Maybe we can get someone attending the meeting to report back, too (hint, hint). More info on the overall project can be found at the Open Archives site. Congrats to Herbert and Carl, et al.!

I might have missed the announce list message, but checking eprints.org (esp. the download page it appears that version 1.0 is ready to go. According to the main page, "An earlier private beta release of eprints met with unanimous approval. The first complete operational release is available (for free, of course) as of December 1 2000." Of course, the Open Archives standard is about to change as of mid-January (at the public meeting in D.C.), when they will release the next version of the OAI spec. So eprints will have to change pretty soon, but it looks solid already otherwise.